


Party

by unwindmyself



Series: curious shapes shift in the dark [46]
Category: True Blood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banter, Exposition, F/F, F/M, Female Friendship, Fix-It, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Plans, Team Dynamics, Vampire Family, agency and choices!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-14
Packaged: 2018-02-04 15:08:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwindmyself/pseuds/unwindmyself
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A predictably eclectic, surprisingly productive team meeting is in order before anyone thinks about another battle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Party

**Author's Note:**

> Part four, "Biting Down."
> 
>  **Original Characters** : Vanessa Quinones, Antoine Henriques, Isi Hill

“I thought this was a debriefing, not a house party,” Pam mutters, glancing around at the sight before them.

The spectacle, more like.  Because there’s really no other word for it when on the low dividing wall between the dining room and the living room there’s a supernatural rights activist sitting with legs crossed, flirting with an equally-showy medium standing next to him and sipping some sickly-sweet margarita _thing_ ; four teenage-shaped baby fairies are scattered across the rooms, handing out homemade cupcakes and dancing as they walk and kind of sort of amateurishly flirting with everyone who’s not clearly otherwise attached; two shifters and the other three activists sit in one corner drinking beer and having a serious conversation about either supernatural rights or independent films; and one of the baby vampires has been roped into the baby fairies’ shenanigans while the other stands with the more grown-up fairy-telepath in the kitchen, talking in low voices as they pour drinks. The only thing missing is said fairy-telepath’s tolerable dumbass of a brother (who couldn’t get out of working tonight, doing the usual carefully-looking-out-for-vampire-gangs rounds in the parish).

And the two oldest vampires currently present stand between the two rooms, their arms identically folded and their expressions identically blasé.

“It’s almost like the bar is open again,” Eric remarks, not without a certain fondness.

“Except for the demanding patrons and their comically heavy eyeliner and grinding pelvises,” Pam quips.

“Hey!” Charlaine shouts, practically bouncing over in front of the pair and shoving a tray of sweets in their faces.  “You should try the cupcakes Dani and I made.”

“Nothing doing,” Eric points out bemusedly.

The front door swings open and Nora and Willa traipse in, both looking just slightly disheveled but wholly triumphant.  Willa’s braids are fraying and one of Nora’s knee socks has gotten bunched down around her ankle, they’re both bloodied though not in any serious way, but they’re all smiles and arms slung round each other’s waists like the best of pals.

“Okay, so y’all are the kinds of vampires who can’t eat,” Charlaine clarifies.  “’Cause some of the ones you see on TV or whatever…”

“There’s a reason that there’s such variation in vampire mythology,” Nora announces as she all but skips over.  “Well, a few.  People enjoy making up stories about what they don’t understand, that’s one, and we let them get facts wrong so we could keep our cover up, that’s another.”

“Don’t get her started,” Eric drawls.  “My sister was something of a media critic, and it’s one of her favorite rants.”

“Shush,” Nora retorts, lightly smacking him in the shoulder.  “You’ve no room to make fun of me for actually _doing_ things when you were so content to fuck around so much of the time.”

“Children,” Pam and Willa exclaim accidentally-in-unison, immediately locking eyes as they do (Pam smirks, somewhere between pseudo-flirtatious and smug, while Willa looks slightly sheepish).

“Right, right,” Nora shrugs, too aloof to pass for properly chastised.  “We’ve stories to tell.  Call the troops in.”

“ _All y’all_ ,” Willa shouts, a hand megaphoning unnecessarily around her mouth.  “Congregate or – or whatever.”

So it’s not the most businesslike of orders, but everyone gets the intention, and soon they swarm around the seating area that Sam, Luna, Nicole, Vanessa, and Antoine first claimed.  Sam and Luna squish together at one end of the couch, the three humans move to the armchair (Vanessa sitting on the other two’s laps).  Sookie and Tara cram in on the other side of the couch, wave Lafayette over to join them in what space remains and Isi promptly perches on _his_ lap, smiling cheekily.  The Bellefleur girls all sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the coffee table, Adilyn-Charlaine-Danika-Braelyn, Jessica perches on the arm of the couch, Eric and Pam drag over chairs from the dining table.  And Nora and Willa rather aptly take the stage.

“The good news is it didn’t take us any time at all to find some of Billith’s minions,” Nora begins, all businesslike. 

“And if these few were any indication, they’re not a super-clever bunch,” Willa interrupts, smirking.

“What’s the bad news?” Vanessa pipes up.

“The fact that we found them so quickly would lead to the conclusion that there are more of them than we might have imagined,” Nora sighs.  “But they’re largely newborn, and not well-trained, so it’s really not much more than fighting pawns.”

“Define ‘not well-trained,’” Danika says nervously.

“Thanks to Tara, we know _way_ more than they do,” Willa declares, nodding appreciatively (and with a rather shy little smile) at the barely older vampire.

“There’s a lot about Billith’s apparent plan that doesn’t make sense, but this apparent quantity over quality approach to newborns is fairly fitting,” Nora continues.  It’s funny – Willa’s bouncy and fidgety as ever as she presents to the class, but Nora is all perfect posture and lecture hall diction.  “It’s possible to interpret the book as meaning that the mere gift of new life in Lilith is precious, so it should be given as much as possible, regardless of the follow-up done with any particular progeny…”

“You’re gettin’ derailed, Auntie,” Pam calls out, leaning forward and resting her chin in her hand; as if to prove this, the humans in the room are whispering amongst themselves, though mostly with confusion (nobody’s bothered to bring them fully up to speed on all this Lilith business, is the thing).

Nora pulls a face, which Willa takes as her cue to jump in again.  “So we found  a trio of these cocky-as-fuck minions or whatever,” she explains, “and it wasn’t hard at all to kill them, which is a good sign.  We got two of them right away and then held the other for questioning.”  Said with the dopiest smile, like she’s always wanted to get to say a thing like that.

“And?” Lafayette prompts, waving his hand.  “You don’t gotta keep us hangin’, sweetie.”

“One,” Nora takes over, “he’s still holed up in the old Authority building, like we expected.  It’s a lazy choice on his part and a convenient one for us, as I’ll be able to draw us all accurate maps of the layout, or accurate enough allowing for discrepancies caused by the explosion and other side-effects of his…”

“Dastardly renovations,” Willa prompts, still looking pleased with herself and very pointedly ignoring the way that Pam mutters to Eric disbelievingly.  “Two, the minion as much as confirmed for us that Bill, Billith, he’s been up to this whole mass conversion thing.”

“Most of the newborns aren’t _his_ offspring,” Nora explains.  “The lackey that we spoke with didn’t seem sure if any of them were, which – well, that would figure, wouldn’t it, proper hypocrisy there, but I digress.  They’re all answering to him, though, and the command is for these newborns, whoever they belong to, to go and make more newborns.”

“That’s unsafe parenting,” Adilyn pipes up, because if she’s learned anything from her cousin Lisa’s fondness for MTV reality television, it’s that babies (or youths, or teenagers, or whatever) should not probably be making babies.

“Correct,” Nora says, “but it’s not technically unacceptable.  And it does mean that he’s got an army that grows every night, at least a few members of which probably know _sort of_ what they’re doing.”

“So we’re just gonna go in and wipe them out?” Antoine asks.

“Yes and no,” Eric jumps in.  “Eradicating Billith’s followers is the goal, but we won’t be taking a risk with human lives.”

Nicole and Antoine and Vanessa and Isi all look at each other sheepishly, because – well, they wanna help, but they’re also not exactly into the idea of fighting a vampire god thing.  “And this way, our video’s a contingency,” Nicole declares, because if they spin it that way it still sounds kind of important.  “We can keep it safe, release it if you all tell us it’s necessary.”

“Precisely,” Eric agrees, smiling though not particularly convincingly.

“Well,” Tara says, “what are the rest of us doin’ then?”

“That’s where I was headed next,” Nora declares, dashing into the kitchen to grab paper and pens and dropping them on the coffee table, then falling to her knees so she can work with them easily, leaning over the table and hurriedly drawing out maps with both hands.

For a moment Willa’s just standing there sort of stunned (she’s still not used to the whole speed-of-light movement thing, honestly, to say nothing of Nora’s apparent ambidexterity) but then she steps forward to join all the other around the table, kind of timidly, and Braelyn grabs her hand and yanks her down, grinning.

“Come on,” she exclaims, tossing her hair all confidently like she’s seen in music videos, “join the party.”

That flashy little move has the consequence of getting one of her hot pink earrings tangled in a curl of hair, though, so with an apologetic little murmur Willa reaches to fix that. “We’re plannin’ a battle scene,” she points out. “Not quite the same thing.”

“But we’re doin’ it as a team,” Braelyn points out. “Also, there’s snacks and alcohol. Party.”

Once Nora gets the maps drawn out and sits back on her heels to allow everyone else to look more closely (she’s got a very smug look on her face, because there’s still a part of her, however latent, that rather relishes getting to be a useful show-off, getting to do some of her little tricks and for a good cause; either nobody notices or they’re just pretending not to notice that said look gets even more smug once she’s settled and Eric, whose chair is close behind her, leans forward a bit to whisper something in her ear, then settles back to pet her hair) the conversation shifts into logistics. Who’s going to wind up where, who’s going to do what, who’s forming subcommittees, so on and etcetera.

And like any old house party might, it starts to wind down rather gradually. First the activists depart (Nicole and Luna exchanging last-minute book recommendations, Isi covertly slipping his phone number into Lafayette’s pocket) with promises to check in on things periodically (“guess I’ll volunteer as your official contact, since I’m already everyone else’s go-between,” Sookie offers wryly). Next are Sam and Luna, who haven’t explicitly said but who mean to take advantage of their first night by themselves in a while (Arlene and Terry – and Andy, and Holly too for that matter – offered to have Emma stay the night, and at last report, she was watching horse movies with Lisa). After a snarky exchange with his cousin, Lafayette heads off, and shortly after that Sookie ushers the girls out – Charlaine and Danika make sure to grab the leftover cupcakes, since none of the vampires are going to enjoy them (“damn shame,” Charlaine pouts, “I thought they’d like red velvet”) and Adilyn makes sure to check if Nora’s got another shopping list for her and Braelyn makes sure to blow kisses at everyone because that’s just where she’s at right now.

Then Eric and Nora drift downstairs, muttering to each other (whether it’s plans or worrying is unclear). Then Pam pulls Tara away, murmuring something about bubble baths. And by that point it’s just Jessica, who flops on the now-empty sofa dramatically, and Willa, who clambers into the armchair and wraps her arms around her knees.

“You ready?” she asks softly.

“This is what we’ve been plannin’ for,” Jessica replies softly, but before she can think better of it she adds, “Was it weird?”

“What?”

“Your dad dyin’ right in front of you,” Jessica clarifies.

“Yeah,” Willa shrugs. “I mean, I knew it was probably gonna happen, but it was still weird. The kind of weird that’s gonna be okay, though. I’m probably better off. The world’s probably better off.”

Which she assumes is true with Jessica and her dad – even though this is her vampire dad, technically, the relationship seems even more paternal here and the parallels are clear – who’s clearly the reason why she’s asking.

“Right,” Jessica says. “Of course. It’ll all be fine.”


End file.
